A “restricted access cell” corresponds to a radio cell which is generally located so as to cover a private or semi-private place such as a business or also a place of residence such as an apartment or a building.
It can be advantageous to provide for the installation of such cells in order to offer a radio access with improved performance to a restricted user group subscribed to this access. Thus it can be envisaged to offer a restricted radio access to a family subscribed to such a service and in whose apartment a base station is situated, specifically adapted to cover the place of residence of this family. Many other scenarios can also be envisaged in the use of such specific base stations making it possible to offer a restricted-radio access cell.
Owing to the fact that access to such cells is restricted, the subscribers to a cell of this type can have very good quality radio access, with high transmission throughputs. They can therefore benefit from telecommunications services which would be more difficult for them to access via a conventional cellular network covering said same place.
Such a restricted access cell can correspond to a femto cell, i.e. a radio cell which is smaller than a conventional cell provided in a conventional cellular telecommunications network, such as for example a cellular network of the GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) or also UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) type. The installation of such small radio cells makes it possible in certain cases to improve the radio coverage provided by conventional cellular networks.
In order to provide such a restricted access cell, provision is made to install an adapted base station, hereinafter referred to by the name “cell management entity”.
It should be noted that a cell management entity can be installed independently of other cell management entities, the purpose intended being to provide radio coverage adapted to the residents of the place in question. Thus, unlike other cellular telecommunications networks providing continuous radio cover over a large territory, such as a national territory, the installation of these cell management entities can correspond to an uncoordinated roll-out of the various managed restricted-access cells, since the radio coverage attached to such a cell management entity can be managed autonomously with respect to the radio coverage attached to a neighbouring cell management entity. The features of a conventional cellular telecommunications network cannot therefore easily be applied to a restricted access cell.
It should be noted that today there are objections to high electricity consumption of gateway equipment (Home Gateway) used in cellular communications networks to provide a DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) type service to subscribers.
For similar reasons, the mass roll-out of restricted access cells risks leading to a highly undesirable electricity consumption. In fact, it is highly probable that subscribers have a regrettable tendency not to power-off their cell management entity when they leave the place covered thereby.
Moreover, a mass roll-out of such restricted access cells can cause unwanted interference on the radio cells of a mobile cellular network that are close to restricted access cells. Moreover, the cell management entity in charge of a restricted access cell can be in communication with a cellular network entity and this communication then uses communications resources which can severely affect the overall communications resources of such a cellular network.
It is very likely that the number of cell management entities deployed in an uncoordinated manner is a very high number (of the order of a million at least, for a country such as France). Thus the aforementioned negative effects that can be caused by the roll-out of such restricted access cells could have a very significant impact.
The purpose of the present invention is to improve the situation.